FREEWRITE: Dear Esther

 

I agree with the distinctions that Bell makes between Dear Esther and Gone home. Dear Esther encourages us to make sense of the story through literary texts whereas Gone Home is a more engaging game in that it lets us interact with intimate objects in order to piece the story together. Dear Esther is more of a game in which students with a strong literary background can excel, which makes it more of a contextual game than Gone Home. Even the formal texts in Dear Esther depicts a type of writing that is more advanced and professional. I personally like Gone Home in terms of the player’s interaction with the game and the objects within it. Anyone with any degree of common sense is able to piece together some part of the story whether it be about Katie, Sam, or their parents. People with some knowledge of the culture in that particular time era can better understand the game, which makes it more of a historical game. Both games are similar in the way they let the players explore the plot for themselves. Nothing is conveyed all at once.